


respite

by CopperCaravan



Series: Fallout Prompt Fills [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Codename: Tens, F/M, Post-Canon, Prompt Fill, Reunions, minor depression-esque thoughts, post-railroad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:40:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6407266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fill for blargha: Deacon + Tens & things you didn't say at all.<br/>(Tens leaves the Railroad.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	respite

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to blargha for sending me this because I love these two and also because I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Nobody says much of anything.

"I'm leaving."

She thinks that maybe, if she’s lucky, she’ll end up like Scarecrow: a name harshly and mournfully whispered by one of the agents who knew her, a missing body that they don’t look for, burned out of the Railroad with the bright end of a cigarette.

After everything she’s given them, it’s the least they can do—let her go.

You’d think she’d be used to it: people saying nothing. Even when they do speak, they may as well be silent for all the good it ever does them. But for once, their silence is a comfort. Not permission, exactly, but knowing they can’t stop her now, not unless they kill her. She can’t imagine Drumms rushing her with a knife, can’t picture Tom putting a bullet in her head.

But if they do, she might welcome that too. Any sort of end is still an end.

If silence could be loud, it’d be loudest in his corner. Still wearing those goddamn sunglasses. Him coming along—it hadn’t even crossed her mind. He lets her go but the silence hurts anyway.

Nobody says much of anything.

...

For a while, things are quiet.

She walks the old roads, the crumbling ground that used to be roads, pathways that led to places. They don’t lead to much of anything anymore. That’s fine. She’s not really going anywhere.

It’s a week here and there, maybe at a settlement, maybe not. Really all that matters is that it’s quiet.

She’s got more names now. Sometimes it’s her name, when she’s feeling brave or better or bored enough to want a fight. Sometimes it’s the last name she heard (Janet, David, Charlie, Pam) because it just doesn’t really matter anymore but it isn’t worth the trouble.

It’s never Whisper. Never really was.

Sometimes she pretends there’s a pair of sunglasses keeping tabs on her, sitting three barstools down or a drifter passing her on the road or a person she can’t see because unlike her, Deacon had never been one for just walking around out in the open.

Sometimes she pretends there isn’t anybody there, that she doesn’t look a bit too long into every pair of sunglasses, that she doesn’t take her time nursing her drinks, that she doesn’t stop and look around in the bushes by the road. Just in case.

She’s not quite sure which gives her more comfort, but it doesn’t much matter because it isn’t enough.

For a while, things are quiet.

...

The silence, at least, isn’t a lie.

It’s just some old shack she found, just some leaning walls and a tin roof with holes. Patching it up didn’t give her comfort—too much like before—but it gave her something to do.

Sometimes the sound of dry earth crunching underfoot of a wild, radiated thing drifts through the thin walls and she pretends that she doesn’t pretend it’s a friend come to find her. Sometimes the wind beats against the door and she pretends that she doesn’t pretend someone’s knocking. Sometimes she sings again, whispers to herself, and she pretends that she doesn’t pretend it’s someone she misses—someone she’s lost—instead.

And then one day the sound of crunching earth drifts through the walls and the flimsy door shakes under the soft beats of a hand and she doesn’t believe it, pretends that she doesn’t pretend that she’s hopeful, that she’s tired, that she’s lonely, despite how relieved she is to be so far gone from it all.

He doesn’t say anything, for once. For twice. For three or four or a hundred times, maybe, because she’s still not sure he was there all along, still not sure that he wasn’t.

It’s not what she’d always planned to say, when she sat too long at a bar or walked too slow down the road or looked too thoroughly into the heather.

“Where are your sunglasses?”

The corner of his mouth turns up and the only explanation he offers is his lips pressing pliant but insistent against hers before she even decides to let him in the door.

The silence is the truest thing.


End file.
